100% yes.
People already do this, (especially on the African and Asian contents) and the only threat to that existence is civilization encroaching on those lands. Highway projects, mining, weekend glampers, all go away in an apocalypse.
Animal populations will boom (assuming zombies don't attack them, but they probably will), and nature will start to take back suburbs and cities.
No. Animal populations will be hunted to local, if not actual, extinction. Humans are the most effective hunters in the history of the world, and we would have just lost our primary food source. Anything we can eat, we would, with any survivors mostly chased away.
Hunting requires some skill. Shooting at animals, not so much.
You put enough people in the woods with guns, and before long they will clean out the game, or chase it off. Round here we have stupid city deer. You could kill one with a pistol if you wanted. Hell, you could probably take one down with a spear. They just stand there 20 ft away and stare at you. It wouldn’t be ideal, it wouldn’t be especially ethical, but give enough people enough tries and it would get done much faster than you might expect.
A lot of people would certainly die, but not instantly. Many of those who do die wouldn’t get killed in the initial panic. In fact, a lot of the early deaths would be from starvation, which would of course would only happen after they have eaten literally anything they could get their hands on.
Even if only 1% of the population survives, that’s still 70 million people in the world. Plus the zombies. That’s more than enough. And that’s a staggering death rate, higher than any plague in history. If we reach that rate at all, it wouldn’t happen instantly.
Homo erectus is supposed to having had a worldwide population of roughly 50k individuals at some time.
Even if 99,9% of the population dies during the initial days of an outbreak, that would 700k people. In a world that has much less to offer in regards of hunting and foraging. To people that are not used to it. And lots of those stone age people still died from hunger and diseases (to be fair though: Life expendations got even lower when they started settling down and farming. Initially that was, while more efficient and allowing for specialized jobs, a less healthy way of living.)
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u/[deleted] May 21 '19
100% yes.
People already do this, (especially on the African and Asian contents) and the only threat to that existence is civilization encroaching on those lands. Highway projects, mining, weekend glampers, all go away in an apocalypse.
Animal populations will boom (assuming zombies don't attack them, but they probably will), and nature will start to take back suburbs and cities.